Robin Shortt was born in Canberra and lives in Vancouver. His stories have appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild anthology Winds of Change. His wildly original debut novel Wellside (2017, Candlemark & Gleam) was a finalist for the Aurealis award (best fantasy).

The Marten and the Scorpion by Robin Shortt

Darya scrapes a living as a pickpocket on the streets of Samarkand, a diverse metropolis at the centre of the Silk Road. If she wants tokeepscraping a living, she'll have to pass her gang's initiation: a death-defying climb across the city's rooftops. But she's so exhausted and malnourished that it seems impossible, and her time is running out.

When a forbidding swordswoman arrives in Samarkand from the East, and hires the gang to search for a mysterious box, Darya sees her chance. She has stumbled on two more recent arrivals, young caravan guards who are also interested in the box and whatever's inside. They're as formidable in combat as the swordswoman…and they canfly,leaping from building to building better than any pickpocket.

Darya makes them an offer: If they teach her their skill enough for her to pass her gang's test, she'll help them find the box first. Meanwhile, more factions are drawn into the hunt, including a rival street gang, a sadistic ex-Crusader, and the dreaded Nizari Assassins. And each of Darya's allies has a separate, secret agenda. What's inside this coveted box, who will end up possessing it, and to what use will it be put?

CURATOR'S NOTE

The Marten and the Scorpion by Robin Shortt (whose wildly original debut novel Wellside was a finalist for the Aurealis award), is steeped in Silk Road lore and lethal magic, and cries out to become a wuxia epic helmed by Zhang Yimou or Ang Lee. Darya scrapes a living as a pickpocket on the streets of medieval Samarkand. If she wants tokeepliving, she'll have to pass her gang's initiation: a death-defying climb across the city's rooftops. But she's too exhausted and malnourished, and her time is running out. A forbidding swordswoman hires the gang to search for a mysterious box, at the same time that Darya stumbles on two young caravan guards as formidable in combat as the swordswoman, who are also interested in the box. Darya makes them an offer: If they teach her their skill enough for her to pass her gang's test, she'll help them find the box first. Meanwhile, more factions are drawn into the hunt for the box, including a rival street gang, a sadistic ex-Crusader and the dreaded Nizari Assassins. What's inside this coveted box, who will end up possessing it, and to what use will it be put? – Athena Andreadis

 

REVIEWS

  • "Shortt (Wellside) plunges readers into the underbelly of medieval Samarkand in this beguiling fantasy. // Clever, tightly written, and full of action, this thrilling novel is an epic wuxia film wrought in paper and ink."

    – Publishers Weekly

  • "Robin Shortt's madly fast-paced, pungently vivid wuxia influenced tale… //…a wildly colorful cast of characters… // …the real fun of this breakneck paced story was discovering, along with Darya, the palimpsest of the jiang hu world—the world of the chivalric martial artist—overlying the real world of the Silk Road, bringing with it mysteries and even hints of magic. //…I relished this novel from beginning to end, and I really hope that there will be more adventures with Darya and her friends."

    – Sherwood Smith, creator of the Sartorias-deles universe and Wren’s world, Nebula award finalist

  • "The Marten and the Scorpion is an extraordinary tapestry of mythologies, rich with adventure and secrets, and an urchin of a heroine, as ragged and tenacious as a broken blade. Shortt's sharp, eloquent words bring to life a unique and enthralling world of intrigue and danger, where Kung Fu masters from the furthest reaches of the Silk Road flit over the rooftops of medieval Samarkand, while the streets below crawl with assassins, cutthroats, poison and plague. I loved it. I devoured it. I want more."

    – Leife Shallcross, author of The Beast’s Heart, winner of the Aurealis award
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Go to a bookseller (in the Street of the Bookbinders, say, if you don't mind getting charged foreigner prices) and buy a map of Samarkand. It'll show you the city wall, pierced by its many gates—Lion's Gate, Monk's Gate, China Gate, all the others. Inside the walls you'll see the great central plaza, the boulevards radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel, the marketplaces and bazaars, the ancient fortress of Afrasiab on its hill, the Old Mosque, the minarets and mausoleums the Black Khans built, back when they ruled Samarkand in their own right.

Everything else—a full seven-eighths of the map—will be blank, or maybe filled in with random lines that suggest narrow lanes, criss-crossing and twisting.

That's the Maze, where the common people of Samarkand live in their tens of thousands. No one's ever made a real map of the Maze. It would take you months, and by the time you were done, with all the houses knocked down and rebuilt and extended in the meantime, it would already be hopelessly out of date.

The houses are mud brick and wood, two storeys at the most, clustered in groups around tiny courtyards, and between them is a labyrinth of skinny lanes and side-streets, dead-ends and blind alleys, laid out according to no plan whatsoever.

And now the Wolves are chasing me through it, and if they catch me, I'm dead.